


noticing is the first step to diagnosis

by acceptnosubstitutes



Category: Falling Skies
Genre: Agoraphobia, Anxiety, But YMMV, M/M, Panic Attacks, antisocial tendencies, at least I don't think so, crack!shipping galore, migraine headaches, not terribly major ones, spoilers up to 4x04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2014-07-15
Packaged: 2018-02-08 22:43:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1958877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acceptnosubstitutes/pseuds/acceptnosubstitutes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anne Club’s arrival at Peace Camp brings agoraphobic, antisocial Dr. Kadar a problem in the form of a migraine plagued soldier he shouldn’t want to be near. If he would just <i>stop smiling like that</i>, first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	noticing is the first step to diagnosis

**Author's Note:**

> For some reason, I thought Dr. Kadar and Dick would be cute together, this happened, and it turns out that they really _are_. Imagine that.
> 
> First time writing Kadar, which I suppose is what I'm most nervous about. But I think he came out all right, no?
> 
> Thanks to floridaalicat from tumblr, for the title.

For all Lourdes likes to glare at him and call him a non-believer, she hasn’t bothered Kadar in his very public lab under the peace camp compound.

Maybe she’s afraid his science will rub off on her. Or something. Like logic. Reason.

So it can’t be Lourdes, or one of her gang, currently making that racket outside his door. He frowns. It’s quiet down here, like he likes it, precisely because no one visits the antisocial doctor willingly. And that’s the way he wants it to stay.

He briefly recognizes Anthony, at least, pinning the voice down long before he comes into view, dragging someone else along. Kadar can’t place him but he must have come in with Anne’s group, and looks like he’d rather be anywhere else right now.

Kadar can sympathize.

To encourage the yes, yes, you’ve seen the mysterious sideshow freak Dr. Kadar, you can leave now process, Kadar pushes his glasses up by the bridge, even if they droop back down within little more than a few seconds and steps around one of the large tables taking up space in the room.

“Hey, doc,” Anthony says, “got a moment?”

Kadar just looks at him, but Anthony isn’t put off. His friend though, sighs, and tries to pull away from the arm Anthony has around his neck. Anthony lets him go, but stalls the protests before they start.

“You’re being weird again. I know you _said_ you weren’t injured,” he tells a frustrated sigh, “but I don’t believe you.”

Kadar blinks.

“You are aware,” he tries, “that Dr. Glass is the combat medic, and not me?”

This time, Anthony’s friend answers him.

“That’s what I told him. That you’re a scientist, an educator, not a medical doctor. But does he listen?”

And blinks again. Kadar didn’t think anyone who hadn’t known him from his days at Charleston would bother learning his name, much less his history. Lexi Glass-Mason’s brood surely didn’t show much interest after she stopped that mech.

Pure probability, he’d tried to explain to them. She got lucky. They were in a lightning storm for god’s sake, but did they listen?

Kadar’s taken aback when Anthony’s friend, and he really should’ve asked him for his name five minutes ago, to be polite, smiles at him. Like they’re old friends commiserating over an annoying, but well meaning, mutual friend.

“I make it a point to know the people I’m supposed to be protecting, doc,” he says, quiet.

Right, of course. Pragmatic. Kadar clears his throat. That smile was disarming. Distracting. That’s all.

“Anne,” Anthony interrupts before Kadar can say anything, “is busy. No injuries here, but she still wants everyone to sign up for a thorough check-up. And yours, Dick, by the way, is tomorrow, early morning. Don’t make me and Denny have to drag you there man. We will.”

“I know.” And Dick sounds very, very weary, like this is a conversation they’ve gone over more than once.

“But right now, we’re going to leave Dr. Kadar alone. Yes?”

It’s the reverse of the way they came in, with Dick silencing any of Anthony’s protests with pointed glances and stubborn silence, arms crossed over his chest. Eventually, Anthony sighs, shrugs his shoulders.

He waves at Kadar, then turns to leave, with his friend right behind him. Or, rather, more or less right behind him.

For like a minute.

Then Dick pauses, presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose, much like Kadar had, but seems to be fighting back a headache, eyes squeezed tightly shut. He sways, alarmingly, and if that wall hadn’t been there, he’d have been on the floor.

So Anthony’s instincts were correct.

But, Kadar thinks, not in the right area. He watches Anthony spin around, steady his friend, but it still takes Dick a few moments to slowly blink his eyes open and not look like he’s about to be sick all over Kadar’s lab.

Kadar hopes not. It already has a weird enough assortment of smells. Vomit would not enhance them. Any of them.

It seems like light bothers Dick, because Anthony opens a patch of it when he turns, and Dick takes a step back, into relative dark. Sound too, because though he didn’t seem pleased about Anthony’s over protectiveness, he didn’t appear seriously upset about it either.

And that was certainly a wince. Another step back.

Kadar may not be Anne Glass, but he recognizes all the signs of a migraine. And he’d probably better do something before Anthony unwittingly causes his friend more discomfort than he already has.

“You should,” is what he goes with, rather than simply, ‘your friend is suffering a migraine,’ but there’s no help for it now. “Stay?”

So it’s really no surprise they both just look at him, though Kadar’s not really sure Dick is focusing on much. His eyes look glassy.

He’s not used to being the center of attention, even just of a crowd of three. Kadar sniffs, pushes his glasses up.

It’s probably a migraine with aura, and the pain will set in soon. The dizziness, sensitivity to light, looking sick, all point to it. Those kinds of headaches, and Kadar speaks from experience, are absolutely hell.

If Dick chooses to do something stupid, like move, right now? He probably will end up losing whatever he’s eaten in the past few hours all over the floor. Maybe multiple times.

And Kadar’s lab is cool, dark. Quiet. Precisely the reasons Kadar retires here when his skin starts itching again, when the people are too close, there’s too much noise. It’s a haven for him when he has those sort of headaches too.

Rarely, remember, do people venture down here not extremely lost and confused.

Seriously, the dorms for the new arrivals are…Kadar pauses. Well, he’s not sure where, exactly, but Dick will most likely regret it shortly should he try and move there on his own.

Those are any number of things he considers saying to the two blank looks (well, one blank, and one sort of looking sick again) but doesn’t get the chance because Dick leans back against the wall and slides all the way down to the floor.

“That’s,” he purses his mouth, grey.

And then just curls into himself, burying his face into his thighs and looking so tense Kadar’s teeth clench, just looking at him.

“Ask Anne about migraines,” Kadar tells Anthony, wearily.

-

With that little ruckus taken care of, and his lab blessedly quiet again, Kadar turns back to the piece of twisted, singed mech metal lying out on his tables. He’d made sure to take only a small piece, nothing anyone would miss.

But even though it’s the burn he pays most attention to, the point the lightning bolt hit the mech, the sliver of metal is fascinating enough on its own. Kadar trails his fingers over the metal, half admiring the craftsmanship. It’s like the aliens grew these things in pods for all he can’t find a seam, or any hint this particular piece wasn’t always a part of the destructive killing machines aside from the small cuts he’d made into the mech itself to relieve it of the shard.

And wasn’t that nerve wracking, holding a cobbled together blowtorch in the middle of the night, staring into the (currently) empty eyes of a being that had only to point itself in an intended direction to obliterate a school district.

It took close to a week of dedicated effort to take off even this piece, from the back, a little under the chest.

He’s not sure he’s any closer to learning anything new about the mechs, either. Like how they avoid being lightning rods in the middle of rainstorms, for example.

With a sigh, Kadar sets aside his beaten up safety goggles, massaging his temples. What are the odds he’s developing a headache now too?

Too. Kadar blinks, pauses. His head swings in the direction of the door where his unlikely companion is, yes, still passed out against the wall.

But he looks better, has gotten some color back, his back now straight against the wall that doesn’t look any more comfortable than previous. His head is bent, knees draw up to his chest with arms wrapped around his legs, and he seems like he’s sleeping well, even if the odd flinch still plays out over his body.

It’s probably best for him. But that can’t be comfortable.

Kadar thinks a moment, then goes to get the blanket and pillow he keeps stuffed inside a drawer for times he doesn’t feel like clambering out of the lab to his quarters. Retrieved, he crouches near Dick, suddenly at a loss.

How to slip the pillow under his head without waking him up?

Kadar tries a few ways, eyes flicking uneasily up at his face, but Dick doesn’t stir. Not surprising, really. When Kadar has his migraines it’d take a bomb blowing up to wake him up, how out of things he becomes.

Maybe he should just let it be. The floor isn’t comfortable, but it’s enough, right, and waking Dick up right now would be just this shade of cruel.

Besides, maybe he’d find this weird. Or like Kadar is trying to smother him in his sleep.

Kadar’s heard the whispers.

His fingers twitch, trying to figure out the right way lift his head, gently, and avoid skin to skin contact when the hairs on the back of his neck stand straight up.

Half-lidded, sleepy gray eyes track his movements as Kadar freezes and the pillow and blanket drop into his lap. Equally as mysterious as the mech are those eyes. Kadar’s never seen eyes that gray, the color of perfect storm, close to mech metal actually, but warmer.

And. Oh, he’s halfway on the way to creeper status, isn’t he?

They blink slowly up at him, brow furrowing a little. Confusion and disorientation often go hand in hand in the middle of a migraine, but what Kadar focuses on, of all things is that it’s…it’s cute.

He flushes. Where did _that_ come from?

Dick finally manages to focus on Kadar long enough to recognize what he holds in his hands. And smiles.

This slow, unfurled, lopsided thing, lifting on the corner of the left side of his mouth.

He tugs them out of Kadar’s unresisting hands, eyes already closing even before the pillow hits the ground and his head follows.

“Thanks,” he murmurs, asleep again within seconds.

Kadar clears his throat.

“You’re welcome,” he says, to thin air.

Before he returns to his study of the mech metal, however, Kadar picks up the discarded blanket and drapes it over him, steadfastly not thinking about the warmth radiating through Dick’s shirt when Kadar accidentally brushes against it.

About four hours later, Kadar’s companion awakens again, stretching out sore muscles carefully. Dick looks a lot better, even though it’s clear he could use a few more hours of rest.

But he struggles to his feet, folds the blanket up neatly and sets the pillow on top, smoothing that out too. They get deposited on a desk near Kadar, along with another sleepy smile, murmured thanks.

Kadar doesn’t manage a word in before Dick walks through the door and vanishes to parts unknown.

Oh. Kadar looks at the door, then swings his head to the far corner of the room where his beat up, tweed couch resides. One of the cushions is missing and the foam fluff in the others clump up in bunches in uncomfortable places, but Kadar’s rested there (or more like collapsed) well enough in a pinch.

It’s still more comfortable than the cold, concrete floor.

Kadar groans. “He probably thinks I’m an ass.”

But he shrugs. Oh well. It’s not like it’s anything new. It’s not, but that doesn’t explain the frown, or the number of times Kadar catches himself glancing up at the doorway.

-

And that, as they say, was the end of it. Or, at least Kadar figured.

Except, a few nights later, Kadar stumbles into his lab in the middle of the night, too wired to sleep. Maybe he’ll try a few new things with the mech scrap. He has ideas, and only the violent ones were vetoed by Lexi, so as long as he’s (mostly) non-violent, it should be fine. Maybe he’ll just crash on the couch again and stare up at the ceiling till morning comes.

Either way, he hits the light switch, small generator that powers everything in his lab turning on with a quiet whirr. And then nearly trips over someone’s legs.

“Sorry, doc,” says a strangely familiar voice, and then there’s a face to put to it when Dick steadies him by the arm.

Kadar pulls out of the grasp, little jerky movements because the adrenaline rush hasn’t passed yet and his heart won’t stop beating at such a hard, rapid rate.

This is a first. Someone in his lab before he is.

And Dick seems to get that, dropping back down, cringing into himself and drawing his knees up again, just like before.

“Sorry,” he says again, “chronic.”

Kadar stares. Chronic migraines? How does he ever get anything done?

Dick shrugs, Kadar’s only clue he might have actually said that out loud as opposed to just thought. They slip into an uncomfortable silence, uncomfortable because Kadar seems rooted in place and it’s taking Dick a while to gather the energy to speak again.

When he does, he stretches one long leg out and wraps his arms around the other, hugging it close to his chest. Won’t look at Kadar. But the light bulb is also swinging in place above Kadar’s head, casting what would be blinding light to Dick right now into all corners of the lab.

Kadar should really find, or make, a cover for that.

“Half an hour ago,” he says, which tells Kadar how long his lab has been occupied by someone not himself, “started, the dizziness? Like last time. Your lab is just -”

“Cool, dark,” Kadar finishes for him, “Quiet?”

Another lopsided smile, and Kadar resists leaning in to better trace the outline of it, plot all the angles and figure out, mathematically, what it is that’s so alluring about his smile.

“Something like that.” Dick pauses, licks his lips before continuing. “But I can leave, if I’m going to bother you?”

And that’s just the damndest thing. It should be easy for Kadar to just agree, to send him on his way because what part of antisocial do these people not understand, but. But, when Kadar thinks about it, he doesn’t actually _want_ to be alone.

At least not where Dick is concerned, anyway.

It’s a startling thought, but Kadar chalks it up to the fact the man is so quiet and takes up so little space it’s like he’s not even there anyway. So he shrugs.

But though he turns his back on him, picks up one of his earlier projects instead of a hammer to test the resistance level of the mech metal shard, Kadar watches Dick watch the door.

Watch the door, brow furrowed, uncertainty written all over his face warring with an intense desire not to move for the next, oh, fair number of hours. He’s too…too decent, Kadar decides, pulling at a tangle of wires with a frown. Where migraines are concerned, if Kadar was in his place right now he’d already be fast asleep, not looking like he’s trying to figure out the best way to gingerly lever his weight up in a way that doesn’t make the ceiling start spinning.

Of course, Kadar would never put himself in the position he’d run into other people during one but. Semantics.

He could say, stay. Sit. You look like you’re going to throw up and I’d rather not have to clean it up, because I’m not _that_ much of an asshole to make you have to do it.

But he doesn’t.

Instead, Kadar watches Dick slowly relax, first stop watching the exit like he’s ready to flee at any moment, and then slower, but more surely, lose the tension coiled up in his form as his eyes slide close and his head tilts back against the wall.

Kadar smiles. He sets down the wires and goes to find the blanket and pillow.

-

It becomes a thing.

Because, really, Dick wasn’t kidding when he said _chronic migraines_. It’s hard to imagine the miserable man huddled in the corner of Kadar’s laboratory more and more often daily, or near daily, out in the field, doing his duty and doing it well.

But he does. Because Kadar’s seen it. He doesn’t often venture out of his laboratory much, but sometimes hunger calls, and sometimes he runs into a company coming home, at odd hours, but it’s to be figured. Hardly anyone’s schedules here can remotely be considered regular.

Lexi may protest this is a non-violent camp all she wants, but her mother smiles her tight smiles and her orders are followed without question, even by her messiah of a daughter.

Kadar supposes, being all of months and not even a year old mentally, Lexi had to cling to someone’s word above all others. He’s just glad it’s her mother. That the aliens, for all they tried tearing at the bond between mother and daughter, proved ineffective in retaining Lexi’s affections. Of course, they have them in abundance, really, and that’s still uncomfortable (for everyone) but Anne comes first.

Small saving graces.

Anyway, he’s seen Anne Club, and it twists even his reluctant lips into a tiny grin to hear their unofficial moniker, come back from a mission doing god knows what god knows where, mud stained and wet, weary and more than once nursing an injury kept carefully hidden from Lexi’s (and Lourdes’s) scrutiny.

And still, when Denny elbows Dick in the stomach, grins up at him and raises her arms like a child, he sighs, but swings her up and around in a circle once or twice, while she giggles like a school girl. For no apparent reason. Other than Denny wants him to.

That’s cute too.

It’s clear that Dick and Anthony are friends, tight friends, that Anthony’s concern over his friend’s health was genuine because he keeps pushing. Kadar figures Dick probably would’ve ignored any number of injuries even he could see were worrying, if Anthony weren’t there to get on his case. Every time.

It’s like deja vu, really. Kadar’s sure he’s seen Anthony do this before, and maybe the recipient had darker hair, darker skin, but the fond exasperation Dick looks at Anthony with even as he argues with him just to argue, that’s the same.

Anne keeps him close. There might be a story to that, but Anne Club isn’t sharing, and no one’s gotten up the courage to quiz the combat medic turn commando with steel in her eyes yet.

She relies on Anthony’s strategic brain to plan her missions, but her eyes usually flick in another direction too. Kadar’s not sure whether she’s asking without asking for a second opinion, or if she’s asking if he can get it done, whatever it is, but whatever’s going on in silent communication land between Anne and Dick, it affects the whole mission.

He’s seen entire outings scrapped just because the response to a glance was a shrug.

But that doesn’t mean when a migraine hits, and they’re usually always bad, they don’t leave Dick barely able to function. Quiet. Twitching. Exhausted, even after a few hours of decent rest.

He’s up at odd hours because of them, when most others (except Kadar, of course) are asleep. Usually hungry hours after the kitchens have closed.

Used to it, Kadar can see it in his eyes, so when Dick’s around at some random ass crack hour of the morning, clearly starving, he beckons him over and they share whatever’s left of Kadar’s cold dinner.

With microwaves a thing of the past, such fare is usually unappetizing cold, and meager anyway, but Dick never does complain.

And he’s too decent, again, because though it takes him a while to really get comfortable being in Kadar’s presence (and likewise) after he is Kadar gets so much more done with an extra pair of hands.

Over time Kadar slips back into his usual routine. Forgets he has company one day and starts muttering under his breath about this or that, to full blown talking to himself as he works because sometimes yeah, even he doesn’t like the quiet, for example.

If Dick thinks it’s weird, he doesn’t comment.

But he does let him ramble, streams of what Kadar guesses can only sound like gibberish to him, in between requests for that wrench, those papers from his desk over there, if you please. Sometimes, on the odd chance Kadar actually discovers something new, something exciting, in his laboratory and in his moment of elation forgets he has company, he comes back to himself with that lopsided smile soaking it all in.

It’s, it’s different. But in a good way?

Kadar thinks, maybe, he has what people here like to call ‘a friend.’

-

But despite everything he’s learned to associate with Dick - stability, strength, decency, and in an “I’ll deny it under pain of torture” spirit, cute verging on adorability - Kadar never manages to forget one thing.

This man, this friend of his, is a killer. By necessity only, maybe, because Dick is also the gentlest human being Kadar’s ever seen in a man his size, but still.

He’s killed before. He has blood on his hands. Even if it’s alien blood.

Some of it, some of it’s human though.

No one talks about it, but with the recent upsurge of collaborators, there’s been a convergent increase in human on human violence as well. Sometimes it gets to Kadar that, even four years into the end of the world, humans are still fighting humans rather than the aliens who fucked it all up in the first place.

A more perfect union in the face of disaster, his ass.

And Dick is, is _good_ at it. Whatever he was in a former life, he’s good at ending the lives of others. Not that Kadar’s seen it in person. He just imagines.

Because yes, it’s hard to ignore the obvious fact his friend is particularly fit, that the muscles on his form are _real_ , not just for show, that they mean serious physical strength because Kadar and Dick have been spending so much time together lately.

Not that he’s looking.

Kadar doesn’t like killing. It all but goes against his reasons for choosing science as a career path.

Discovery. Innovation. Creativity. Learning.

Not death. Blood. Devastation. Loss.

Kadar should not like Dick as much as he does. That’s what he tells himself the next time he finds himself crouched by his side, staring hard at the sleeping man for, for _something_. He doesn’t know what, exactly.

Only that Dick is a goddamn puzzle beginning to frustrate Kadar he hasn’t the slightest clue how to piece together.

And then.

And then sleepy gray eyes flicker open, seek out his face. He runs a hand through his hair, only succeeding in further mussing up the already ridiculously curly mass and making it stick up at odd angles. The pain written out in the tightness of his smile, wiped away in another second chased by a hand that rubs at his eyes, that sigh.

All of that, in the sincere, honest question if Kadar needs something.

Yes, he does. He needs the key to this infuriating rubiks cube of what Kadar feels, what he knows, what he’s seeing playing across the face of a killer he should not want to be near.

Dick _is_ different.

Kadar reaches out, impulsively, and pulls Dick to his feet. He stares a little too long at their clasped hands, suddenly aware Dick’s skin is warm, and warmth means alive.

“You should sleep on the couch,” he tells the confused man by way of explanation, “the floor’s not getting any softer. And you look horrible.”

Kadar has a way of being bluntly insensitive, but like always, it just makes his companion blink, just drags out this quiet puff of a laugh.

And Dick doesn’t resist being tugged over to Kadar’s monstrosity of a sofa. Not even a little.

-

Numbers. He’s got numbers in his head and they aren’t adding up right. ‘Course, there’s also numbers in how long it’s been since Kadar went to bed last and those might be in the double digits.

If he could remember.

So, numbers, and his hands are buried deep in the guts of something he’d rather not think about. Electrical, mind, not organic. But these things tend to eat human flesh, if the rumours are to be trusted, and Kadar made sure it was very, very dead before he opened it up.

Its insides are fascinating. If only the Eshphenni weren’t so damn hostile.

But beggars can’t be choosers.

So, of course, that’s when Dick chooses to pop up. Kadar doesn’t know why he feels like he’s blushing akin to a ripened tomato just seeing him, unexpectedly, but he really, really hopes he isn’t. There aren’t any mirrors down in his lab, because _mirrors_ , but now he desperately wants to use one.

Dick doesn’t say a word if he notices, the small smile doesn’t slip, but then he’s also polite. Too polite to mention something like that. Especially if it clearly embarrassed the other party.

Hmm, and what’s that smell?

“It’s past time for dinner,” Dick helpfully says, and Kadar blinks. He’s been at work longer than he thought.

“Not very warm, sorry. But you should probably eat something.”

Kadar’s stomach adds an equally helpful grumble at the smell of, well anything that resembles food would probably summon it. The smile grows.

“See you, doc,” Dick says, a short wave over his shoulder and he’s nearly crossed the threshold again before Kadar manages to say anything.

Kadar, he really needs to say something before that happens, yes. Doesn’t know what, all he does know, however, is that the fact Dick brought him dinner to make sure he’s eating something, at some point in the day, is doing funny things to his heart. Jumpy things.

“Have dinner with me?”

Oh. Oh, god. No, no he should’ve shut the hell up and never opened his mouth.

Dick pauses in the doorway, looks over his shoulder.

“Did you just ask me out, doc?”

Kadar can’t read the expression on Dick’s face. He’s still trying to figure out the manual to read, _all that_ , but he’s lost the smile now. Is that a bad thing?

It’s probably a bad thing.

“Yes? I mean, no. Well, maybe,” and Kadar suddenly finds himself fascinated with staring at the floor, “You don’t have to if, if you don’t want to but I just figured. You’re down here often enough.”

Could he be anymore insulting? Let’s try again.

“I’m sorry, that sounds rude, doesn’t it? Like I don’t _really_ want you here, but you already are so why…not.”

Abort, abort.

Kadar clears his throat, hiding his hands underneath his work table so Dick can’t see how hard they’re shaking right now. It’ll be hours before he can get them to stop.

Silence.

Then, the chuckling starts.

Kadar looks up, alarmed and mortified, only to see Dick’s tilting his head at him. Has that inexplicable lopsided, fond, _fond_ , grin on his face again.

“Well,” he says, quiet, “maybe I’d like that.”

-

So, hmm. Kadar has a, a date.

He could label it anything else - a friendly dinner among friends, because people, friends, do that don’t they - but the way his pulse rate jumps exponentially high anytime he thinks about Dick, he knows that would be lying to himself.

Because that, that’s what the problem was. That’s what Kadar’s problems with reading, or understanding, Dick root from. Because they were emotional from the start, and not rational.

Kadar, well. He’s got issues with emotions.

And right now, he’s showcasing all of them.

He forces himself to sit down the moment the nervous energies working their way through his body jack up into overdrive, and he drops his screw driver more times in a half an hour than he has in a month. His hands, smoothed out in his lap, have this fine tremble that is worse then the shaking, really, because the shaking _stops_. Eventually. Sometimes this won’t.

For days.

Because. What. The. Actual. Fuck.

He has a date? How did that happen? Kadar does not date people. He doesn’t even like people. Well, he does like Dick, but that’s the damn problem in a nutshell.

What does he do? What do people _do_ on dates? What do they talk about? They have to talk, right.

A slightly hysterical, high-pitched sound escapes Kadar.

Small talk?

Shop talk?

But he wants this, thing, to be different than what they usually talk about. Or, come to think of it, what Kadar rambles about to his often silent, but ever attentive, companion. He doesn’t know a lot about what Dick does with his days when he’s not having a migraine and in intense pain.

That’s a sobering thought.

And what does he wear anyway? It’s not like this is a black tie affair (or that Kadar even owned a suit even before the war) but it’s something isn’t it. He should look nice. _Try_. But most of his clothes are threadbare, or covered in stains of materials he’d rather not think of origns.

Should he bring something? And what? Kadar’s the one who suggested dinner, after all, so it’s his responsibility.

More somewhat wounded noises spill from his lips, he doesn’t even know why he’s making them. It’s getting hard to breathe.

He doesn’t know how to _cook_. He had to phone his _mother_ about how to cook ramen noodles in the microwave for gods sake. He’s not saying when, because he does have his pride, but Jesus.

And they never really set a time, because time now only reminds people of when the clocks stopped working. And any watches are surely dead by now, four years from the start of the war.

Or a place, for that matter.

And oh, oh, _oh_.

There’s a shift in the air at his side and if Kadar could muster up the will to care, right now, he’d be mortified someone is seeing him like this and he can’t even really tell who through the tears clouding his eyes.

So instead, he just makes a confused lurch forward, only to find himself caught up in a pair of strong arms. Which let go of him almost as soon as they steady him.

Kadar almost regrets losing the connection.

“Hey, hey,” says a quiet voice, “breathe, doc. Okay? Just breathe.”

His heart lurches, painfully, when Kadar realizes he knows that voice. Quite well. He’s only, sort of, heard it nearly daily these past few weeks. Oh, he probably just steamrolled right over Dick all that time, didn’t he?

Chatterbox. Can’t stop talking. The Charleston doctors assured him it was just a coping mechanism that would pass, given time. It really hasn’t.

“You’re having a panic attack, Kadar,” Dick says, and man, if Kadar hasn’t just royally screwed this, thing, up he wants to hear his name roll off that tongue again. And again.

Dick shifts where he’s crouched on the floor beside him, expression screwed up in contemplation before it smooths out and the only thing Kadar’s aware of is that there’s so much sympathy in that gaze he wonders if he should ask Dick if _he’s_ ever had a panic attack before.

Or still does, sometimes.

“Bad if I touch you?”

Kadar jolts upright, but manages a few short, jerky shakes of his head. He almost expects to be lifted out of his chair into a hug, which actually might be a really bad idea, but a surprised squawk escapes his mouth when Dick drags a chair over and puts a hand on the back of his neck, tilting him forward until Kadar’s forehead is pressed against his chest and those arms are around him again, a warm, _safe_ , cage.

He knows how to deal with these things way too well to not have experienced them, himself or with someone else, before. Kadar files that away in the back of his mind, for later contemplation.

God knows how long they sit like that, Kadar simply soaking in the warmth from the body in front of him, concentrating on the feel of the hands that soothe lines down his back. Easy like.

After a while, Kadar’s breathing finally eases out and he’s able to sit back, relieved he doesn’t even have to ask Dick to let go of him. He just does.

And even more relieved Dick does not ask him if he’s okay, or if that particular display of awkwardness is typical of Kadar’s…issues.

He just talks to him. And Kadar. Really likes the sound of his voice. He should do that more. Talk.

“So,” Kadar hears, aware Dick’s standing and walking away from him. But only to pick up something off the floor and put it on the table behind them. “Took longer than I figured it would. Sorry, about that.”

Kadar tilts his head when the smell hits his nose, something that smells like pasta, and tomatoes, along with a horde of spices he can’t really identify from one or the other.

He turns to see Dick carefully clearing away a patch on the table to spread out a slightly battered red tablecloth, onto which he lifts out a container and a dark bottle, contents rocking lightly up against their confines, from the basket he must have carried everything to Kadar’s lab in.

It’s when he pops the lid of the container and Kadar can see inside, that Kadar becomes aware this is not usual dinner fare.

And how the hell did he come up with spaghetti? That actually looks like it’s homemade, rather than boxed pasta and canned Prego?

Which isn’t a disparagement by any means. Prego is, was, delicious. All the Prego.

“Apparently,” Dick tells him, inviting him over with a tilt of his head, “Lexi’s peace brigade weren’t the first to settle here. This isn’t exactly the most appetizing pasta ever, or particularly fresh, but it is organic. The Esphenni haven’t tampered with it at all. You can find the fields the people before plowed and planted a little ways outside camp. All fallow now, but that can change.“

Kadar blinks, points at the table, and then at Dick. “You?”

He nods, has this nervous chuckle Kadar shouldn’t find so utterly adorable. Too late.

“Yeah. Used to be a chef before the war?”

Dick goes from calm, from comfortable, to clearly _un_ comfortable in record time. And it suddenly hits Kadar.

He’s exactly like him.

Well, not as antisocial (if at all), probably not agoraphobic, but definitely as anxious. What exactly would someone’s relationships with other people be like, if someone was sick as a dog and unable to function half a month? Every month? Or enough, anyway.

And.

And, everything Dick is makes a lot more sense now. What he does. The being quiet thing, the giving Kadar his space and trying his damndest not to intrude even when it would ‘cause him pain not to, listening to Kadar ramble on about concepts so above his head it must be ridiculous with just a smile, helping him around the lab for no real reason nor complaining, hell, bringing this “date dinner” to Kadar’s lab because he somehow just knew Kadar felt more comfortable there without even needing to be told about his agoraphobia.

Always being so, so _patient_ while Kadar freaks the fuck out on him numerous ways.

Someone might call that _flirting_ with him.

And he’s been doing it? For some time?

“You’ve been flirting with me all this time?” In his natural eloquence, of course.

Dick frowns at him, but it’s transitory, and seems more directed to the fact Kadar’s not the one flushing like a tomato, for once. He ducks his head, rubs at the back of his neck, eyes flicking up at him.

It should be illegal for embarrassment to be so cute.

“Maybe?”

Kadar just blinks at him. He doesn’t get it.

“But, _why_?”

Why…all this? Sure Kadar can exit his lab, it’s not like it’s impossible, it’s just mostly a really bad idea. All the time. He doesn’t really hate people, not really, but communicating and being around them too long. He hates that. He’s not, not really a catch, okay. Talks to himself all the time. Is frankly a bit of a nerd. Okay, a lot.

He panics. _A lot_.

And Dick is…just about perfect. Alright, so yes, he spends a great deal of his time avoiding people, lights, noises, and well, existence, for long periods every month. Is kind of quiet. Functionally mute, maybe, for the most part. And well, Kadar can’t really recall him (willingly) in the presence of many people other than Anthony, Anne, and Denny.

And himself.

But he’s perfect in all the ways that matter. To Kadar.

So, yes, Kadar wants to know why. Wants to stop guessing.

It puts Dick on the spot, something Kadar feels a small twinge of guilt about. But. He needs to _know_.

Dick tilts his head at him, like he does. “Well, why not?”

That’s not a damn answer.

But before Kadar can push, he continues.

“You’ve never complained about my migraines,” and the way he looks away tells Kadar someone complained about them, a lot, “or refused to let me stay with you. You, you even looked after me when I had them. Didn’t mind me sticking around when I’m pretty much useless to you. Or not smart enough to understand half the things you say.”

Dick trails off, shrugs. And, okay, wow. Cataloging all of that, _well shit_ , someone might say Kadar was flirting right back.

“But you know so much about me,” is the only thing Kadar can think of to say, “and I know next to nothing about you.”

There’s that flicked up glance again. The look away.

“Always time for that?”

Kadar smiles. The biggest smile maybe he’s ever known, and it hurts, in an uncomfortably stretchy sort of way, because unused muscles do not like being told to cooperate on short notice like that, but he can’t stop.

“Well,” he says, “maybe I’d like that.”

It’s the first time he’s felt like he’s ever said just the right thing, and the smile he gets back in return is the best thing in the universe. Kadar is deciding now. Nothing will ever even touch it.


End file.
